Wednesday, September 29, 2010

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TechCrunch Backstage Day 2: Armstrong, Chamillionaire, Mayor Gavin Newsom, Oh My! (TCTV) Top
Chamillionaire admitting his love for Mafia Wars, Steve Streit recounting his first meeting with Michael Moritz, Tim Armstrong and Erick Schonfeld discussing office arrangements in New York, and Mayor Gavin Newsom’s thoughts on baring a striking resemblance to Batman— that’s all the action you may have missed if you only watched the stage during day two of TechCrunch Disrupt. Check out our backstage interviews with Chamillionaire, Streit, Armstrong, Newsom, Bill Gurley and Twitter’s Jason Goldman. We’ll be back with our live feed for the final day of Disrupt at 8:45 AM PST. If you missed the backstage interviews for day one, click here . Steve Streit , CEO of Greendot , on the road to IPO and meeting Michael Moritz. Chamillionaire : “I don’t play Farmville…I play Mafia Wars.” Benchmark Capital’s Bill Gurley on the criteria for IPO. Editor Erick Schonfeld and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong discuss office arrangements in New York. Okay, Erick Schonfeld here, co-editor of TechCrunch with Tim Armstrong, my new boss. So you just made an announcement on stage that, what was the announcement? Yeah, the announcement - was really, I think is something that's very exciting for our future and hopefully, the future with you guys is TechCrunch and AOL getting together and AOL acquiring TechCrunch. But, I think the most important thing we're acquiring is actually talent. And I think you're a big part of that. Mike is a big part of it. Heather is, and the rest of the team and we're excited for the TechCrunch brand also. We think the future of the internet, it's gonna be built on really substantial brands. And TechCrunch is already well on it's way to being one of the most substantial tech content brands in the world. So where does TechCrunch fit within AOL? You're building, you have many brands and many blogs as well. Where do you see TechCrunch fitting in? I think first, you know, out of the gate I think TechCrunch, well one thing we'd like to do is kind of keep it in its space and put more resources and scale behind it, and then you know, as we we work together and figure out where the opportunity pockets are, I think we will bring more of the tech properties into an area where you can really say, you know, like Ziff Davis did in the, you know 80's with tech content, how do you become the most influential source of tech content in the world? And I think TechCrunch will be a centralized, you know, pillar of that strategy and, uh, but I think out of the gates, we're gonna figure out how to work together well and figure out how to scale. Right. What attract you to TechCrunch versus other types of properties in terms of and you've been going in many different directions in terms of broadening your content, your content properties? Sure. I think TechCrunch has a couple of very unique strategies that I think you guys have been employing. And I think, you know, one is journalism. I think really covering companies and a specific ecosystem very well. I mean, it's you guys I think are known as the breaking news place for tech information. The second is things like CrunchBase and other things where you guys have been really influential on taking structured data and mixing that into the, you know, the journalism and breaking news things that you're doing. I think that's actually a very substantial subtext to this. And the third thing is, you know, what is the energy level behind the TechCrunch brand and the ecosystem of that in your ecosystem?  And, I think, you come here, there's 2,000 people here, many of the most influential people in the tech community are here and, I think, you take the combo of breaking news journalism, structured data and really deep environment, whether it's the conferences or just relationships you have. I think that's a winning combination and that's what really made us interested in TechCrunch. Okay. Well, we look forward to keeping on building the brand under AOL and, I know that we're really looking forward to the resources you're gonna bring to bear. Right, we will bring the resources and you're gonna be in New York with me so I'll see you in the office. So, I get a desk right next to you. You will be in my office. Okay. Thank you very much. All right. Bye, sir. All right. Thank you. Okay. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom talks about promoting SF’s technology sector and the industry leaders he turns to. MG Siegler and Twitter’s Jason Goldman discusses the recent redesign.
 
MC Hammer Rocks A Perfect Day At TechCrunch Disrupt Top
I thought things started off pretty well today at TechCrunch Disrupt with surprise visitor Tim Armstrong , AOL’s CEO. But the day ended on a perfect, perfect note: MC Hammer, who most definitely still has it, did a full performance at 1015 Folsom in San Francisco. 2,000 people packed in to the club and were immediately rewarded with MC Hammer and his dancers doing things that made every single person wildly happy. Not one person wasn’t dancing. It was, as I occasionally say, awesomeness in a bottle. My coeditor Erick Schonfeld, who had been celebrating for more than a couple of hours at this point, insited we was a dancer and asked me to hold his jacket while he jumped out on stage. Security (the security that’s supposed to keep everything orderly), suggested he not. So much for that plan. Later though he redeemed himself by opening a bottle of champagne all over Jennifer Allen. I note that he smuggled the champagne into the event after stealing it from Ron Conway’s home. And to be clear, he brought this to an event that had free drinks. But other than that slight security issue everything was pure magic. Hammer brought these amazing dancers that did amazing things. But a minute later Hammer, who’s nearly twice their age, busted out some impossible Hammer dance invention that separated the men from the boys, so to speak. I watched mesmerized with a goofy grin on my face the whole time. And gave Hammer a big sweaty hug as he walked off stage with the entire crowd wanting to see it all over again from the top. Even Chamillionaire, fresh off of a poetically brilliant rant on stage at Disrupt, was part of the party. For an hour tonight, we had 2,000 tech lovers in one room. A room full of bonhomie and general warmth and goodness. That’s all thanks to MC Hammer. Thank you to Hammer, to Google Ventures and SV Angel for making this day absolutely perfect from start to finish. Now, off to bed for me. Day Three of Disrupt Awaits!
 
Atlassian Buys Mercurial Project Hosting Site BitBucket Top
In July, product development software company Atlassian said that it would be putting its recently raised $60 million investment towards M&A in the enterprise space. It looks like the company is moving fast—Atlassian has just acquired Bitbucket.org , a hosted service for code collaboration. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Bitbucket, which hosts over 60,000 accounts, is the premier hosted code collaboration provider for the Mercurial distributed version control system and provides a service for developers wanting to share and collaborate on projects. Bitbucket, which is similar to GitHub or Google Code, hosts code for Adium, MailChimp, Opera and other great opensource projects. Distributed version control systems decentralises the software repository, allowing each user to have a full copy of the source code repository on their local machine. It allows users to work without being tethered to a network. BitBucket will be incorporated into Atlassian’s family of development products. Atlassian’s software development and collaboration tools to help teams conceive, plan, build and launch products. Products include JIRA (issue tracker) and Confluence (content collaboration). The company’s offerings are used by 20,000 customers around the world, including Facebook, Zynga, Cisco, and Adobe. As part of the integration, Atlassian is going to make Bitbucket completely free, offering free hosting for 5-devs, with unlimited private repositories. And as a launch promotion, Atlassian is offering a free year for a 10-user account. Atlassian says that the acquisition helps the company helps fill a gap in product offerings and makes Atlassian a more comprehensive platform to developers. So developers now have a place to dump and host their code, and a place to track their projects issues and bigs within Atlassian. As Atlassian’s Jay Simon tells me, the company wants to do what Adobe does for designers, except for technical teams. CrunchBase Information BitBucket Atlassian Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Matt Cohler: I Hope Silicon Valley Doesn't Become Versailles Top
...does it feel like that or does it feel hotter? Just so you know, it's a 104 degrees on the roof and these guys are working like as heroes to get it down to 78. Well seriously, we're doing everything we can and sparing no expense and I mean literally sparing no expense because I'm miserable in this kind of heat. W e have a few minutes with Benchmark general partner, Matt Cohler. Matt, are you back there? Watch your step, that's a tricky stair. Hi. Thanks for coming. Thank you. Have seat. Congratulations. I don't know what you're talking. All right. Your...you knew this is gonna happen. Your... either you or somebody from Benchmark said we can talk about whatever Mike wants to talk about except Facebook and Twitter. I mean come on, we're gonna talk about at least a little bit of Facebook and Twitter, right? No. You wanna see. No, but just like nothing. But you were, you were linked it in your early at Facebook. Facebook is like still close to them, have never said a bad word about them, despite my I constantly trying, is now the time you're finally gonna come clean and say. nothing at all. It's an amazing company. I've tried this in four or five interviews. So, okay so then we won't talk about Facebook or Twitter. It's always fun for us even if it's not fun for you guys. One time, you might break down. You'll never know. You got the wrong e-mail and you'll, b ut there's lots of other things to talk about. So you are an investor in, you join, it's 2. Exactly 2 years. In fact, today is my 2 year anniversary. Excellent, and so since then you have lead investments in Asana? Yup. Former Facebook. Yup. Quora, former Facebook. Yup. Zendesk? Peter Fenton and I did that one too. Together. Research case? But I'm actively involved in agendas. Research case? Yup. Yup. And what else? Wait, wait. Sir? Yeah, a company in Shanghai called Baising which is a C2C classified site , really well. You spend a lot of time China. I spent some time in China. I wouldn't say I spent a lot of time. I spent time in China in 1998 and 1999. The first startup I worked for was a company in Beijing called the Asia Info , which went public a little bit after I was there. With both have back on the P-networks and the building and measuring software systems that China uses for the internet, it was an amazingly exciting thing. But I wasn't particularly important or key person at the company, I was just... You wouldn't say you're focused on Chinese investments right now. No, definitely not. Benchmark is sort of, when you think about sector stage in Geography. It's sort of a three dimensions of venture investing. We're sort of 80% Series A, 80% IT, 80 % Silicon Valley. But that other 20% will make exceptions on a case by case basis when we thought this were really compelling reason to do so can still add the kind of value that we aspire to addwhen we invest in a company . I know there is one big topic that we want to carve out a big chunk of time on. So let me ask one small question first and then jump in to that. It's not such a small question, but you know, there's been a lot of talk on TechCrunch Security Event about Angels vs. Super angels and there's lots of controversy around that. I'm not gonna ask you to jump in to that. But, did you cut to the bullshit on this. Can you tell me, if you speak to an entrepreneur... Yeah. How they should see the funding process you know... Yup. What really matters whether whoever their talking to. Yep, so great and a very important question. So a couple of thoughts on this. First thing is you know, as we said let's read out the labels Angels, Super angel or BC, call what you like. The key questions that an entrepreneur needs to ask is number one, who's money are you investing? Are you investing your own money, or are you investing somebody else's money. I would argue that anybody who's investing their own money is what has historically been called an angel investor. And anybody who is investing somebody else's money is what has generally been called a venture capitalist. You know I think Ron Conway said yesterday that Super Angels are just small VCs . That makes a lot of sense to me. You know I think they have LP's . They're investing institutional investors money just like larger scale venture capitalist too. So you know, I think it makes sense to think of Super Angels as micro VCs essentially. Yeah. So the first question is whose money are you investing, your own or somebody else's? The second question is what have you done in the past, either as an entrepreneur or as an investor, to help build companies to become really great long term, important, enduring franchise companies. There are a lot people in the venture capital world, at least a handful of people in the venture capital world who can really speak to that. You know, we heard here from Mike Moritz with his experiece with Greendot, with my partner Bill Gurley with his experience with OpenTable taking companies with very, very early stages until billion dollar plus IPO. But more important than the IPO or the dollar number is that they've really helped entrepreneurs to build the lasting, enduring institutions. That's what I get out of bed to do in the morning, that my partner's get out of bed in the morning. I've done that, you know, I've been fortunate enough out of bed to do in the morning, that my partner's get out of bed in the morning. I've done that, you know, I've been fortunate enough to help great entrepreneurs to do that at LinkedIn and on their Facebook being on entrepreneurial teams at both of those companies. You know, there are some people in the so-called Super Angel community who have a really compelling history at that, there are some who don't. There are
 
Why Is Chamillionaire Here? Top
on stage. Have a seat. Alright, have a seat. Last year, you just showed up. He showed up. ... and we put you on stage as an expert at the last minute. Yeah. And the crowd was pretty impressed and so, we thought anytime we get you on stage to talk about things whether to the music industry or anything else, I wanna hear what you're thinking. Well, actually today, I actually wanted to address that actual thought for why is Chamillionare here. Because I actually been seeing like, you know, the Twitter stream and some people are like, you know, Chamillionaire and MC Hammer aren't the only people that know about tech. And, you know, some people are, like... I actually saw a blog that came up in my Google alerts last and there was a girl that had wrote something about... she felt that there was somebody better to be up on a tech panel and I guess they felt that I was using my celebrity to be up here and, you know, just to, you know hang out with Mike and just, you know, I didn't have any kind of information about. Yes, if you got nothing better to do. Yeah, nothing better to do. This is like the peak of being cool. You're right. Yeah. So I want to address that because, I want everybody. You sound like you're a little angry. No, I just gotta kinda get this now. I can't wait to hear what you're gonna say. I want people to understand how the tech world dynamically changes my world. Now, a lot of people start up with a tech company and they have a startup and they're building it up and then their goal is to get acquired or whatever and mine works the same way. I started off with a record company a long time ago, 1998. I build up a big audience, a big user base. On the internet? Yeah. No, I'm saying in the street everywhere. Yeah. Sold CD's. Had a lot of, you know, just sales, consumers, so that made Universal come and purchase my company. So they gave me millions of dollars and then from that point I put on albums and made millions of more dollars sold over 1. 5 million records sold. You know, 5 million ring tones. So, it made a lot of money with Universal. Now, that was back in the days when people used to receive millions of dollars from these major companies. And now, I've watched the dynamics of music completely changed to where we sold tapes, we sold CDs, and then everything started becoming music is free now. And technology is what did this. Technology is what made this whole music industry completely changed. Now, if I go to any rapper, and I asked them what's the biggest tech thing that they recently know about. You know what they're gonna say? They say Napster, and Napster, you all know about Napster for a long time. This is the last thing they know about, and I'm wondering why this information doesn't trickle down about all these companies that are changing. You know the dynamics of music to us because what happens is these start up companies and these big companies they go to the laser CEO's and they start to tell them about their companies, but the major CEOs don't bring it down on artist like me. And the reason why people like me need to know about these stuff is because we're the influencers. We're the people that your kids are trying to pretend, trying to be like, we're the people they're trying to emulate. We're the people they're listening to. We're the people that they are following on Twitter. We're the people that are actually, you know, just influencing so many people traveling across the world. I just left Norway, I just left Dubai. I'm going all across the world and I have this little test where I'll be like, how many people - every show I do this - I say, "How many of you all got Twitter?" And everybody will start screaming. And I say, "How many of you all got Facebook" And everybody will go crazy and I'll say, "Okay, I'm about to take a picture of the whole crowd and I'm about to upload it on my Facebook and my Twitter page and, I'm gonna include all of you on the picture so everybody throw your hands up." So everybody does it and then I take the picture and sometimes I don't even upload it on my Facebook or Twitter but everybody goes because they wanna see how you know, they wanna see themselves in the picture so my label is like how did you get, you know, 600,000 followers. They thought I had like bought them or cheated, you know. And I was like, no I'm actually out here working to get those followers but I want real, real people. And you know after uploaded that picture, I started thinking like, man I started actually being in the market place and seeing the difference between, anybody can write a blog and tell you numbers. They can be like this is how many users Twitter has compared to Facebook but, I actually was everywhere seeing it. I actually was in Norway and I talked to some students and they were like, they are talking about Spotify. So, I'm like so you all been on Spotify? They're like, yeah man, streaming is the future, everybody streams. All, I can go to of 10 of my rap homies and none of them know. None of them know. These are influences. They don't know what Spotify is. Now, I came to TechCrunch, the last TechCrunch, and I met a girl and she introduced me to people from Spotify they gave me Spotify so it's not in the US. I have it on my phone. I'm looking at it and I'm like I kinda got a little scared because this is gonna dramatically change my industry, when people start doing this. They start just streaming music. Not only buying songs for 99 cents, but they're just playing them all and paying a monthly, you know, service. And I understand this other company is in competition but, I didn't even find out about them until I found out about Spiderfly, and then I had to backtrack and find out there was other people that already have this. And I started learning information so quick that it made me be like, "Man." Instead of asking why is Chamillionaire here, we should be asking why isn't everybody else here. Why am I the only here, why is Hammer the only one here because when Napster came, it completely changed my industry. And ever since then, there has been a whole bunch of other technology companies that have came and we never get to find out about them until I come and meet somebody like Mike Arrington or, you know, whoever and they're telling me about these companies so that's why I'm here. I'm here for knowledge and a lot of people come up to me... Are you here for competitive reasons, it sounds like, you want to know what's happening, so what's happening next? Listen. if my sink is about to ship over there, my ship is about Hey, I just, if I need I life raft, I wanna know ahead of time, you know? WhenNapster came, it blindsided my whole industry of artists, because they didn't know and urban legend tells you that Napster came in to the major labels and had discussions with them first about doing business. The major labels decided no, we don't want them. We're gonna shut you down, 'cause that's what they do to a lot of start ups.
 

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